Arrayed with a capital
by D-eadLovers
Summary: He hated their justice, with the same hatred he held for those who served it. And it hated him back, prancing with its capital J, leaving him deprived of what he held dear. Submission for the fourth fic exchange at the Bellatrix Lestrange Forum.


Story written for: Vivien Lestrange. Prompt 3. They can't take away our self-respect if we don't give it to them- Mahatma Gandhi.(The quote has to be included in the story)

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor do I make any money from writing fanfictions.

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**Arrayed with a capital**

He knew she was convulsing on the upper floor, her body soiled by the blood that poured from between her lips, her eyes rolling back in their sockets.

There was nothing he could do about it, but to pray for them to get tired of her, his gaze beseeching the pristine ceiling. But she was the main instigator of their suffering, and one did not grow tired of revenge.

However, it wasn't so much her pain that grieved him as it was the fact that he wouldn't be able to soothe it in dusky intimacy. For an everyday ritual had been made of those moments in which, injured owing to her recklessness, to her rage, to her duels, she lay undressed for him to assess what would require bandaging. Sometimes, bitter, she grumbled at the touch of his ointments. Sometimes, a laugh on her lips, she allowed his hand to wander over the slight curve of a breast, her thighs opening to let him surrender himself to the moistness of her sex. And he healed them all, her daily wounds (for daily they were, as his wife was such a reckless creature), embracing his role with tenderness.

Instead of roses and protection, it was relief that he offered her. Therefore he was driven to despair by the notion of this duty he wouldn't be able to perform, and the crescendo of her screams exacerbating the state of him, with a motion of his head, he came to violently collide with the back of his seat.

He wished to asphyxiate them, her torturers, slowly, relishing in their agony, until their last breath, which would sound the death knell of their wretched existence. He would have grabbed those chains they had arrayed his forearms with, and used them to adorn their throats, their links crossing their flesh as they now crossed his.

He wished, by their death, to feed the infernal cycle of revenge.

And it is revenge you consider as your due, Rod? Rabastan would have retorted, one eyebrow raised, his question accompanied with a disbelieving snicker.

Barbarism for barbarism, that was how a war was led, he would have answered.

For he had been barbaric, that he didn't deny.

He had delighted in the angle, perpendicular, which Alice's neck came to form with her shuddering body. A broken doll, whose threads were slipping between the fingers of a mad puppeteer. And when he grew tired of his toy, he abandoned its cross, leaving her inert; dull-eyed and foam on her lips.

His beloved had smiled all the way through, her eye fulfilled by those tears spilled in her name. She who made herself an ever-shifting woman, fair, dark or red-haired, but always the enchantress. Her mores were flighty and his faith unshakeable. For she moved from bed to bed, not offering her hips, but murmuring to the men, stroking their ambitions with one hand.

Such insult to my honour to conceal it this way, the soft, great, white, dark Magic, to make it into a shame when it can be but pride, ugly when it is no less than superb, minor when it is superior always. Scorned it is, the soft, great, white, dark Magic, so as to refrain from injuring this talentness mass, for which surnatural could be but a rodent emerging from a top hat, she had whispered to him one night.

He loved his justice, and served her the best he could, eagerly awaiting her every desire, taking the emeraldmark on his forearm. Lady with numerous faces, she wore with him bloodthirsty features and the attire of an avenger.

He was bearing her colours when he tossed the Longbottoms down onto the granite flagstones of their dining room.

However, it was their justice he had to face later. Bloodthirsty, yet hypocritical, it adorned a capital to outshine its sisters. He hated it, with the same hatred he vowed to those who served it. And it hated him back, their justice, leaving him deprived of what he held dear.

His wand, he would never hold it again. His wife, he would never again hear her laugh, right from the dawn, when she fervently slammed her heel against the parquet floor, near the bed, so that he wouldn't sleep any more than she did. His reputation, he knew it to be burned to cinders. His freedom, he would only enjoy it within his mind.

However, not everything could be stolen away, Frank and Alice had taught him. Their justice would thus never be able to take away his self-respect, if he didn't give it up himself.

Now, he was a man of convictions, and they alone founded the estime he had for himself.

The door opened then, two Aurors on the threshold.

He greeted them with a smile**. **

**The end**

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**Author's note: **To avoid any confusion: The woman Rodolphus refers in the middle of the story is not Bellatrix but a metaphor for justice, as he imagines her as a versatile but worth fighting for, woman. Justice is to him, mostly a matter of point of view.

Translation from french by Inkfire


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